EVALUATION OF CEMENT-BASED GROUT FOR

REINFORCINGUNSAFE ROCKS OF STONE CARVINGS AT

HANGZHOUHANGZHOU KLIPPE IN CHINA
SUBMITTED BY- PRASANT KUMAR KANUNGO

M.TECH, STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING,

IIT BHUBANESWAR

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INTRODUCTION
Stone carvings are basically inscriptions, sculptures and other imprints of human activities on rocks. stone
carvings possess not only high artistic value, but historic value as well. The stone carvings of Hangzhou
Klippe were established and sculptured mainly during the tenth–thirteenth centuries, and they have been listed
as one of the national key cultural relics in China since 1982. An unstable cliff body is one of the major
problems affecting the preservation of the stone carvings of Hangzhou Klippe. Previously two phases of
grouting were undertaken to solve the problems of cracks but still water leakage was still the major problem
found after some years. So there was the need to develop or improve the desired properties of the new
grouting materials that are to be designed and possibly applied in the future, among which are better
injectability, better waterproofness, and less soluble ion precipitation are some properties of concern.

METHODOLOGY
Five grouts were prepared with different binders which are ordinary portland cement, superfine cement,
metakaolin and additives such as water glass, organosilicone and NaOH were evaluated. Both fresh grout
properties that is workability and stability and hardened grout properties which are compressive strength,
durability, and ion dissolution were tested. Two dimensions of specimens were prepared, one is 2 × 2 × 2 cm,
non-standard specimens for waterproofness and ion dissolution tests and 5 × 5 × 5 cm ,standard specimens for
compressive strength and durability tests.

EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS

FLOWABILITY
For this test a specialized hollow trapezoidal cylinder was placed in the center of a glass pane, with the larger
circle facing up. Then, the fresh grout was poured into the trapezoidal cylinder to fully fill the container. For
grouts with W/B= 0.45, SC had the highest flow value of 355 mm, followed by very similar values for
OPCW, OPC, and OPCO that are 330, 335, and 330 mm respectively. In the case of OPCM, however,
although it had a high water/binder ratio of 1.15, its flowability was still not as good as the other four grouts,
which were prepared with a lower W/B ratio of 0.45. This might be caused by the larger specific sur-face area
of metakaolin.

Fig. 1. Flowability of different grouts (Fang et al., 2018)

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WATERPROOFNESS
The waterproofness of different grouts was analyzed using a water contact angle instrument. Water contact
angle analysis indicated that OPCM was completely hydrophilic because the water drop was immediately
adsorbed as soon as it made contact with the sample surface. OPCW and OPC showed similar water contact
angles after 2s and 60s, which shows that water glass had little effect on the waterproofness of ordinary
portland cement. The water contact angles for OPCO and SC after 2s were higher than that for OPC, and
comparing the angles after 2s with those after 60s, OPCO and SC also showed less water contact angle
reduction than that of OPC. These results showed that the introduction of organosilicone into grouts or the use
of superfine cement instead of OPC, could improve the waterproofness of cement-based grout.

Fig. 2. Water drop on the surface of hardened grouts (Fang et al., 2018)

FREEZE-THAW TEST
Before the freeze-thaw test, compressive strength values of the specimens were measured using an electronic
universal testing machine. Then, the specimens were placed in a freezer at −30°C for 4 h, taken out, and
soaked in water for 24 h. The specimens were then kept in an oven at 65°Cfor 4 h. After seven cycles, their
compressive strength values were measured again. For each grouting material, three specimens were tested.
All specimens show reduced compressive strength values after seven freeze-thaw cycles. Compared with the
strength values before the test, the reduction degree of the compressive strengths of OPC, OPCW, OPCO, SC,
and OPCM were 30%, 6%, 11%, 17%, and 33%, respectively. The result indicated that the incorporation of
water glass or organosilicone could greatly increase the freeze-thaw resistance of the grouts. Compared with
OPC, SC had better freeze-thaw resistancE probably because of the higher compactness induced by the SC
cement.

Fig. 3. Compressive strength of different hardened grouts before and after test (Fang et al., 2018)

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ION DISSOLUTION
Ion dissolution of grout shortens the service life of grout and pollutes the surface of cultural relics. In this
study, the concentrations of (SO)42-, OH−, and Ca2+ dissolved out of the grouts were measured. The
specimens were first polished, then washed with deionized water and oven-dried at 50°C until achieving
constant mass. Then, these specimens were soaked in 800.00 mL deionized water and 20.00 mL of the liquid
was sampled each time, at the time intervals of 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 28, and 120 days. Among the five tested grouts,
OPCM dissolved out the least amount of OH−, and its max value was only about 65% of the values of the
other grouts, possibly because metakaolin contains no or very little alkaline. After 120 days, OPC, OPCW,
OPCO, and SC dissolved out similar amounts of OH− . The result indicated that neither additives such as
water glass and organosilicone nor cement type would have significant impact on this property. It is shown
that an extremely low amount of Ca2+ dissolved out from OPCM after 120 days, which was only about 2% of
that of OPC.

Fig. 4. Concentration of calcium and hydroxyl dissolved at different times (Fang et al., 2018)

OPERABILITY
Operability is evaluated based on the objective opinions of craftsmen and workers on the smoothness of the
working process. To be specific, the degree of separation between binder and aggregate of the grout a few
moments after the grout mixing stopped was observed. The grouting experience and feedback from craftsmen
are recorded. According to the remarks from the craftsmen, OPC and OPCO had bad operability because the
aggregates would quickly sink to the bottom and block the grouting duct, thus interrupting the grouting. On
the contrary, the grouting processes of SC and OPCM were relatively smooth. In particular, the feedback from
craftsmen on OPCM was good because almost no separation between binder and aggregate could be sensed
during the operation, and the grouting process proceeded without any interruption.

Number Grout Fluency

1 OPC Frequent stoppage
2 OPCO Occasional stoppage
3 SC smooth
4 OPCM smooth

Table 1. Operability of different grouts (Fang et al., 2018)

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INJECTABILITY
Injectability was evaluated by judging the state of attachment between the original rock and applied grouts.
Only one representative sample from each grout was chosen to show the general situation. It can be seen that
OPC and OPCW could not fully fill the cracks, leaving small gaps between the rock and hardened grout. In
contrast, OPCO and SC could adhere more firmly onto the original rock, indicating their better injectability.
OPCM, however was destroyed during sampling as a result of its lower strength.

SEGREGATION
To conduct the segregation test, the top and bottom surfaces of each specimen were scratched off, and the
broken section under the top and bottom surfaces was observed using a video microscope. In the hardened
samples of OPC and OPCW, the binder and aggregate are more distinctively separated, with more binder on
the top and more aggregates at the bottom of the grout. In contrast, the other three grouts showed more even
distribution of binder and aggregates especially in SC and OPCM.

Fig. 5. Microphotographs of different grouts after 28 days of application (Fang et al., 2018)

SURFACE HARDNESS
The average surface hardness of the rocks gathered from Hangzhou Klippe was about 90 HD. Among the
grouts, SC, OPCW, and OPCO all had similar surface hardness values to those of the rocks. The surface
hardness of OPCM was the lowest, and it probably explained why the sample of OPCM was destroyed during
the coring.

CONCLUSIONS
Water glass improved durability of hardened grout. Organosilicone affected hardened grout by reducing ion
dissolution and improving durability. Grout containing superfine cement performed better than OPC.

REFERENCES
Fang, Shiqiang, et al. "Evaluation of Cement-Based Grout for Reinforcing Unsafe Rocks of Stone Carvings at
Hangzhou Klippe in China." Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering 31.2 (2018): 05018005.